Conventionally, there are answer phones which, upon receipt of an incoming call, automatically catch the communication line, send a response message that has been registered beforehand to the corresponding communication line and, upon completion of the sending of the response message, record an arrival business message from the communication line. In such answer phones, after having recorded the business message, the user is allowed to easily recognize that the business message has been recorded by an LED (Light Emitting Diode) or back light turning on and off or by information such as the number of recorded messages displayed on the screen such as a LCD.
Moreover, in recent years, answer phones, which is adopted to the caller ID service in which, upon receipt of an incoming call, a phone number on the caller side is informed, have been proposed. In such caller ID service correspondence-type answer phones, those answer phones have been proposed in which phone numbers on the caller side are memorized in association with the recorded business messages, and during playback of the business messages, the phone numbers that have been memorized in association with the business messages are displayed on the screen such as a LCD.
In the above-mentioned conventional apparatuses, however, although the user can easily recognize whether or not business messages have been recorded, the user is not allowed to recognize whether or not a business message from a desired caller has been recorded until he or she actually play back the recorded business messages; this takes a lot of time for the user to recognize. Moreover, in the answer phone on the caller ID correspondence side, although it is possible to recognize whether or not a business message from a desired caller has been recorded by successively displaying the phone numbers that have been memorized in association with the business messages on the screen through a predetermined operation, the user requires complicated operations, failing to make a prompt recognition.